WASHINGTON  When was the last time you pulled a fresh carrot from the ground? Ever plucked a chicken? Gotten real dirt under your fingernails?

These aren't esoteric questions for Americans sitting down to overeat on Thanksgiving. Nor are they an invitation to plant a new generation of Victory Gardens, though that might not be bad in an era of finite resources. The questions are posed to make a point about coping with the economic and social upheaval of these times.

First, the thanks: To armed forces men and women in far flung places; for the change of power without violence that the United States is about to undertake; for the love of family and friends; for prosperity of the many, and for the hope of prosperity for those who have not seen it. Thanksgiving Day — more than any day — combines hope and reflection.

Of all the post-election piling on of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the most absurd moment may have come when she was interviewed for a pre-Thanksgiving TV feature at an Alaskan turkey farm. In the background, a worker appeared to be in the process of a live turkey pluck.

The clip zipped through the blogosphere and cable TV, invoking the snarky, knee jerk reactions from the usual places.

Palin haters said it was another example of her cluelessness. More likely it's because she, like perhaps many of her neighbors, had seen a bird plucked before, and had placed it in its proper context.

A few on the talk TV circuit clucked about having such an unsavory act going on in the background, conveniently overlooking the fact that the networks have offered human-on-human violence as entertainment for generations. How, exactly, did the critics think plump, tasty turkeys arrived on umpteen million dining room tables this week? Self-plucking, perhaps?

Three, four, five generations removed from such basics of life, most Americans have no clue about how their food is made.

In her delightful best-selling book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver described her family's attempts to live a year off locally raised foods, much of it from the family's own garden. She did it, in part, after realizing that Americans had lost something fundamental in their ignorance about such basics of life. She described friends of her children recoiling in horror from their Arizona garden after learning vegetables had come in contact with dirt.

So Kingsolver and her family moved from the desert of Arizona, where water is an endangered resource, to familial ground in Appalachia, where water routinely falls from the sky. The family sought to live more in balance with life's gives and takes.

Americans have become, Kingsolver concluded, so clueless to the links in the food chain that they actually think tomatoes are supposed to taste like the cardboard boxes in which they arrive at the supermarket.

"We don't know beans about beans," Kingsolver wrote in the 2007 book. "Asparagus, potatoes, turkey drumsticks — you name it, we don't have a clue how the world makes it."

So what?

Well, it might be said that our economic problems stem, at least in part, from the same kind of distance, the same sort of institutionalized ignorance. For the economics of scale, we've forsaken or neglected the basics of life around us.

We put money in global banks that have no incentive to invest locally. We buy oil from unfriendly fiefdoms while forsaking generations of local wind power, solar and biomass technology development that could enhance the community.

We invest in mutual funds that flow in rivers of commerce that are a mystery to all but the experts. As a result, we don't connect our savings with the loan for cousin Eddy's plumbing business or neighbor Mary's dental school loan.

Ever pulled a fresh carrot from the garden, washed it, and eaten it on the spot? It's like no other carrot you'll ever eat.

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